For the million or so people working in the NHS, a number of things come with the job: a boom-and-bust budget, growing demand and a high level of public expectation. What staff don't always expect, although many have now become attuned to it, is repeated criticism from the government responsible for the health service.

Last year, the secretary of state Jeremy Hunt spoke of his concerns about what he called the "normalisation of cruelty", the implication being that the NHS had slowly become an organisation in which the appalling treatment of patients was commonplace. I have no doubt that the health secretary wants to do well by our health service and the patients who use it. Yet, although his motives are good, I believe they are unintentionally misdirected. The sad reality is his remarks disappointed many in the health world, myself included. Yes, poor care happens and the Royal College of Nursing will never be a refuge for it; however, it is not systemic and if the rhetoric is overblown, people will take comments like these less seriously.

Then, shortly after the publication of the Francis report into the failings at Mid Staffordshire NHS trust, Hunt demanded that NHS staff "go for gold" and cease settling for the mediocre. Again, his comments were no doubt well meant, but I suspect they were met with exhausted sighs and shrugged shoulders across the health service. The implication was that nurses, doctors and others were choosing not to go above and beyond for patients, rather than being prevented from doing so by a system full of obstacles.

The government has since delivered its initial response to the Francis report. It is worth remembering that Robert Francis delivered 290 recommendations; he laid the blame for the failings at Mid Staffordshire squarely at the feet of management and regulators. Imagine our disappointment then when the government turned their face against major recommendations and what nurses have said will help them the most.

Instead, the government proposed that anyone aspiring to be a nurse would need to work as a healthcare assistant for up to a year before starting their training. Had the government taken the time to learn the status quo, they would know that student nurses already spend half their time on clinical placements on wards and in the community, learning how to deliver fundamental care. The implication behind the proposal is that our nurses-of-tomorrow enter the profession for the wrong reason. Other than a desire to care for patients, what other possible reason could there be? The frozen salary? The reduced pension? Or perhaps the constant criticism?

The regrettable truth is that the government's rhetoric needs a rethink. The reality is that no one cares more about patients than NHS staff. This does not mean that things do not go wrong, sadly they do. However, a blinkered focus on the negative impacts on how people feel about the health service. Patient satisfaction remains high, with around 90% of people rating their care as good or excellent. Our NHS has not "normalised cruelty", far from it; staff are delivering for patients every day.

The government must stop talking down NHS staff and concentrate on the bigger issues. We need to regulate and train healthcare assistants, we need staffing levels that are enforceable in law and we need to learn the real lessons from Mid Staffordshire. We need leadership in the NHS that fosters a caring culture, one that gets the best out of people. This type of leadership comes from the top, and government must start to focus on what matters, giving staff the tools to do the job. Only then will nurses and doctors be able to deliver the gold standard of care that patients deserve.